Category: General

I have just added the RefTagger module to this site.  It seems like a valuable adjunct to a site that has as many Bible references as this one.

I have set the default version to TNIV.  I may change that from time to time just to keep people thinking!

For Proper 15B the gospel reading is John 6:51-58, which continues from the previous reading.  In that reading, Jesus barely got started with the gritty physical metaphors, and the people were offended and resistant.  This theme of offense will surface many times in portion of John in which Jesus is addressing the crowd in general.

I am not one to promote offending people.  I have even written an article titled Witness Without Being a Pest. But there is a dividing line between two major types of offense, and it applies to the gospel.  The first type of offense is given when people say needlessly hurtful things or behave rudely.  This is you, the speaker, offending people.  The second type of offense is the offense many people take when the truth is spoken to them.  This can apply in the real world.  Point out to a reckless driver just what about his driving is reckless, and he may take offense even if you do your very best to do so appropriately, and you are one responsible for point it out to him.  You may be a parent or a police officer.

Obviously, both parents and police officers have to suffer through times when people are offended, not by their behavior but by the message they must bring.  This offense will come no matter what the person does to try to stop it.  Yet both parents and police officers generally know that there are ways in which you present a message that creates a different offense of its own.

So here Jesus offends his audience and meets there resistance.  They’re unhappy with this “bread eating” metaphor and what it implies, connecting Jesus with the miracle of the Manna in the wilderness.  So what does Jesus do?  He turns up the heat!

He moves from bread to flesh and blood and from implications to pretty broad and open statements.  When the truth offends, sometimes the truth has to offend even more in order to generate a right response.

It’s hard to give advice on the situation in which each is needed.  Sometimes one just needs to plant the seed and then let it grow, backing off before more offense is given.  At other times one needs to keep wielding the hammer at the hard rock.

Proverbs gives us this dilemna and some advice:

Don’t answer a fool according to his folly,
Lest you become like him yourself.

Answer a fool according to his folly,
Lest he become wise in his own eyes.  — Proverbs 26:4-5

May God give us the wisdom to know which advice applies in each case!

Ephesians is such a great epistle, but I want to just mention one verse:

 So then put aside what is false and let each one speak the truth to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. — Ephesians 4:25

The polite lie is a common means of keeping tempers cool.  We do it all the time.  We pretend to like coworkers that we loathe, we don’t tell important people what we really think about their ideas, and we try to pretend that our attitude is good.  At work, we may well be penalized if we don’t put on the right set of attitudes.  Your boss probably doesn’t want to know you have a hangover, your kids drove you nuts this morning, and you can barely see your desk, much less work at it efficiently.  So you say, “Great!”

But we do it even more in church.  I’m talking about the “faith face.” It seems that many people believe Christians should never be sad or downhearted, and thus to be spiritually great, one must not only deal with hardship, one must always present a cheerful demeanor to the world and to other Christians.  After all, if someone finds out that not everything works out for you, a Christian, they might be put off of the gospel.

But this approach very often produces the opposite effect.  When a person who is looking honestly at his life notices all these cheerful faces around him, however deceitful those cheerful looks might be, he may become discouraged, because he thinks he’s the only person who lacks the faith to remain cheerful in adversity.

Now this is not the only case in which speaking the truth is important.  But it is one in which many Christians hurt others while intending to help.  Put away everything that is false, including your faith face.  Be honest and open.  At the same time, be ready for others to be honest and open, and don’t condemn them.

Out of the Depths is the title of a book on the Psalms by Bernhard W. Anderson, and an excellent little book it is!  it’s title comes from this Psalm.

There are just two major points I’d like to make about this Psalm.  There is much excellent commentary about it, and the notes are worth reading.  You could do worse than to preach from it or use it in Sunday School.

First, if you are to cry “out of the depths” that’s means you’re going to be there.  I say that not to discourage, but to encourage.  There are many Christians who either believe, or more commonly imply by the way the talk, that you are never really supposed to be in the depths.  As a Christian you’re supposed to be up, happy, and bouncy all the time.  How do they imply this?  By putting on their “faith face” and denying troubles.  They’ll testify about how God helped them after a problem is successfully handled, but somehow their friends never get to catch them when they’re really down.

I have this problem even in communicating with my wife.  I don’t want to burden her with the idea that I’m not in control of everything.  But that’s a silly position to be in.  She already knows I’m not in control!

Odd then, that we should try to put on our faith face even to God.  It’s very discouraging, first because we have to force ourselves to pretend, and second because we make others pretend.  If the “faithful” are always happy and never in the depths, then others who in their own minds are not so faithful must try to keep up or be thought second class citizens.  A little honesty, as exemplified by the Psalmist, would go a long ways!

Second, however, is  verse 4.  Because there is forgiveness of God, he can be feared. Doesn’t that sound paradoxical!  Now many will try to diminish the impact of the word “fear” by using “respect” or “held in awe” or something similar.  But there is a solid element of fear in respecting God in the Old Testament.

But the bottom line is that without a recognition of our sin (see verse 3), there would be no way for us to truly respect God.  The person who feels no guilt does not feel fear.  I remember being pulled over by a Michigan state trooper while I was in graduate school.  When the lights flashed behind me and the siren did its thing I was momentarily concerned, but I quickly saw that I was within the speed limit.  I knew I hadn’t blown through any stop signs or been driving erratically, so as she approached the car I was more curious than fearful.  As it turned out, unknown to me my license plate was dangling by one loose screw.  It’s possible someone had started to steal it.  She verified my registration and told me I needed to secure it.  Then on I went.

With God, we have to recognize who we are and who he is.  But if God was not forgiving, that  recognition would make it impossible to approach for the opposite reason–terror!  Now there is a proper fear of the Lord, a fear that recognizes that there are consequences for our actions and that God knows all.  But there is an improper fear, a different sense of fear.  It’s the difference between fear of just punishment and fear of assault and battery.  The same word may be used, but we all recognize the difference.

The Psalms are amazingly honest and forthright.  Perhaps we should all try some of that ourselves!

I must be sounding like a broken record, but  I really dislike mangled passages.  It is sometimes possible to quote part of a passage and just hit the highlights.  That may be required by time limitations. But when the changes made to the passage change the intent of the story, or make nonsense of it, that is another matter.

In Proper 14B, the Old Testament passage is 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33. I would divide the story into the following elements, with those in red included in the lection, while those in black are not:

1. David commands that Absalom be treated gently
2. The battle occurs and is won by David’s forces
3. Absalom encounters his father’s troops
4. Joab is told and rebukes the messenger for not having killed Absalom himself; they debate
5. Joab goes to where Absalom is hanging from a tree and pierces him with them
6. Joab’s young men finish the job
7. The battle ends
8. A considerable debate about messengers
9. The Cushite takes word of Absalom’s death
10. David mourns

Thus we lose the actual story of Joab’s disobedience which explains much of the later history.  The death appears to be some sort of mob action.  I do agree that in seeking highlights one could leave out the long debate about messengers, though I fail to see why the entire passage cannot be read.

David’s indulgence is part of the story of David as king.  Note how he is overwhelmed with grief at the death of Absalom while paying little attention to thousands of deaths among the troops who were following Absalom.  One might consider this more or less natural for an ancient near eastern despot, but not for the man after God’s own heart.  And we can see that David’s own followers don’t see it as such a natural thing.  They want thanks for their service and they want to celebrate their victory.

All of these are elements of the story that call on us to think about the consequences of our attitudes and actions.

I know that people don’t have much patience for long scripture readings, but learning the Bible story is not well served by cutting out key elements of the narrative.

This is Steve Hill on David and Bathsheba, challenging us all …

Let me apologize for my failure to write this week.  I was busy with book releases, and had little time to write.  I did read and think, however!

One of the great problems for Christianity in the world tdoay is our general feeling of being OK.  Forgiveness is hard in a world where we find it easy to excuse wrongdoing.  In the ancient world there was a sense of fear of the gods, of the results of doing wrong.  Being ceremonially unclean was an important issue and one which one would feel compelled to rectify.  It was nothing like the sort of feeling we get when we skip church too many times.

In our texts we see the contrast multiple times.  In Jeremiah 31:31-34 we see the mystery of a broken covenant that can be replaced by a new and better one.  Broken covenants often resulted in death.  While a new covernant might be made with a country by a conqueror, it was likely that the old king and/or those responsible for breaking the covenant would be dead.  We don’t take breaking agreements that seriously today.

Psalm 51 is a prayer of penitence that reflects a deep sense of guilt.  No excuses, no shifting of the blame.  The Psalmist is definitely not OK, and he knows it.  True penitence results from a very real understanding and feeling that something has gone very wrong and must be corrected.

When we look at the texts of redemption in the New Testament, we will fail to see them in all their beauty unless we recover the sense of wrongness from which we are to be redeemed.

The prolem with being OK is that you don’t think anything needs to be fixed.

If you aren’t acquainted with the concept of types and antitypes, you will find it much more difficult to see a connection between the lectionary passages and to build sermons that connect the overall story of the gospel.  I’m just providing a brief note here, because I saw a good working definition in the Orthodox Study Bible, p. 190:

…In each case, the type–the first event–is linked to its corresponding future event, called the “antitype.”  It is a relationship that begins with a promise and ends with a fulfillment in Christ.

The OrthSB then quotes St. John Chrysostom, but I prefer quoting a bit more, even though the source I’m using is in archaic language:

Seest thou how grace comes by Him? look also to truth. His grace the instance just mentioned, and what happened in the case of the thief, and the gift of Baptism, and the grace of the Spirit given by Him declare, and many other things. But His truth we shall more clearly know, if we understand the types. For the types like patterns anticipated and sketched beforehand the dispensations which should be accomplished under the new covenant, and Christ came and fulfilled them. Let us now consider the types in few words, for we cannot at the present time go through all that relates to them; but when you have learned some points from those (instances) which I shall set before you, you will know the others also.  (Homilies on the Gospel of John #14)

Especially in the case of Numbers 21:4-9 and its connection to John 3, this concept can be very helpful.  See my note today on the Participatory Bible Study blog.

Yesterday I wrote about the equivocal nature of the sign of the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, and how it was both a symbol of death, and a symbol of fertility and life in the ancient near east.

Today in my reading I checked the notes in the The Jewish Study Bible and found an interesting note.  It seems the Rabbis were uncomfortable with this use of the serpent, which seems to be an apotropaic symbol (symbol that turns something away).  In magic, such a symbol might be an object that is particularly resistant or harmful to what is to be turned away (garlic with vampires, for example), or, as in this case, something that looks like the danger itself.  The Rabbis preferred to think that it was turning to God that provided heal.  While doubtless theologically correct, we are left with the fact that God’s command was to look at the symbol.

Now what’s more interesting is the later history of this serpent in Israel.

He [Hezekiah] removed the high places, shattered the standing stones, cut down the Asherah poles, and broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until that time the Israelites were burning incense to it.  It was named Nehushtan. He [Hezekiah] trusted in YHWH his God, and there was no one like him among the kings of Judah who came after him, nor among those who were before him. — 2 Kings 18:4-5

As you see, Hezekiah is commended for his actions.  Moses was commanded to make the serpent and did.  Hezekiah destroyed it, and was commended for it.  What made the difference?

“Well,” you may say, “that’s obvious.”  And it is.  But have you considered the implications?  The people’s use of a divinely mandated symbol results in the need for it to be removed.  A thing that was once good becomes a source of temptation because of the way people react to it.

Now let’s think about prayer for a moment, just as an example.  How can prayer turn into idolatry?  When we act according to God’s will and then we decide that it’s our method that brings healing.  We take a particular set of actions that result in someone being healed, and then we assume that if we repeat those actions, healing will result every time.  When it doesn’t we will often simply pursue it more diligently as if we are trying to cast a spell but haven’t got the wording just right.

But God isn’t a magic object that we can control.  He may command a particular action, as with the serpent, but if the symbol is turned into an idol, as it was in Hezekiah’s time, it’s time for it to be broken up to release some perfectly good metal for a proper purpose.